| @ llewdor: The characters in both the original play and the film derived from it ARE fictional. In the film, the two lawyers (played by Tracy and March) were named Henry Drummond and Matthew Harrison Brady. In real-life, the lawyers' names were Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan. In addition, the teacher in the real-life case was John Scopes (not Bertram Cates).
While the story is BASED on a real-life incident and the characters are BASED on real-life people, the story was slightly fictionalized just enough to qualify the film as fictional; one major fictional plot point involved Cates' engagement to a minister's daughter; in real-life, Scopes didn't have a girlfriend, much less a fiancee, at the time of his trial. |